Emilio Botín - obituary

Emilio Botín was the chairman of Banco Santander, which he built up into one
of the world’s most successful banking groups

Emilio BotínPhoto: AFP

6:54PM BST 14 Sep 2014

Emilio Botín, who has died aged 79, was the third-generation chairman of Banco Santander, which he transformed from a modest Spanish regional lender into one of the world’s most successful commercial banking groups.

Botín’s native city of Santander on Spain’s north coast (comparable in population size to Swindon) was developed in the 19th century into both an Atlantic port and a holiday resort for Spanish royalty and their entourage. Banco Santander, created by royal charter in 1857, found its niche in the finance of maritime trade with Latin America and came under the control of the Botín family in 1909, when Emilio’s grandfather took the chair, to be followed in 1950 by Emilio’s father.

The young Emilio Botín became chief executive in 1977 and succeeded his father as executive chairman in 1986; though the family eventually owned only a small slice of the bank’s shares, their boardroom control was never challenged.

Spain had joined the EU at the beginning of that year: Banco Santander rode the upswing that followed, grabbing domestic market share by offering high-interest accounts — and ignoring a gentlemen’s agreement between Spanish banks not to poach each other’s customers. In 1994 Santander acquired a troubled rival, Banesto, and in 1999 it merged with another, Banco Central Hispano — supposedly on terms of equality, though Botín rapidly secured his position and forced Banco Central senior executives into retirement after a legal battle.

Over the decade that followed, Santander became a force in global banking through a relentless spate of foreign acquisitions — in defiance of the rule that aggressive growth in the financial sector generally leads to disaster. In the UK, it acquired the former building society Abbey for £9 billion in 2004, adding both Alliance & Leicester and the rump of the collapsed Bradford & Bingley in the teeth of the financial crisis in 2008; rebranded Santander UK, the group became Britain’s fifth largest high-street lender, with more than 1,000 branches.

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Botín also bought banks in Brazil and the United States, and was a partner with Royal Bank of Scotland and the Benelux-based Fortis group in the 2007 takeover of ABN Amro of the Netherlands — which brought catastrophe for both RBS and Fortis, while Santander quietly absorbed ABN Amro’s Italian and Brazilian interests, sold off other parts, and emerged unscathed. In 2012, Santander withdrew from a deal to buy 316 of RBS’s UK branches.

If Botín’s ruthless nose for a deal made competitors wary, they also admired his ability to micromanage risk and to impose his ethos across such a vast conglomerate. Having started from a base of fewer than a million Spanish customers, his Santander group eventually claimed almost 100 million around the world — while its balance sheet surpassed a trillion euros, matching the gross national product of its home country.

Surrounded by trusted long-serving associates, Botín kept a formidable grip on his empire in his later years. At an awards ceremony in 2008, he summed up the philosophy that had served him so well: “If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it. If you would not buy a specific product for yourself, don’t try to sell it. If you do not know your customers very well, don’t lend them any money.”

Emilio Botín-Sanz de Sautuola y García de los Ríos was born on October 1 1934. Educated at a Jesuit boarding school, he went on to study law and economics at universities in Valladolid and Bilbao. Having eavesdropped on his father’s business meetings from behind a curtain as a boy, he joined him in the bank in 1958 and became a member of its board two years later.

Outside business, one of Botín’s enthusiasms was for Formula 1 motor-racing: Santander was a sponsor of the McLaren team, whose boss Ron Dennis called him “passionate and charming, firm but always fair”. He was also the force behind a Santander programme which gives €140 million a year to more than 1,100 universities around the world to support research, scholarships and teaching.

Though his voice was not often heard in public, Botín wielded political influence in Spain and his support was crucial in 2012 when the Spanish government decided not to seek a bail-out from its international creditors. He was not free of controversy, however: in 2011 it came to light that the Botíns had held undisclosed accounts in Switzerland since 1936, when Emilio’s father stashed some of their wealth there after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; they agreed to pay €200 million in back taxes to avoid charges, denting a billion-euro family fortune.

Emilio Botín is survived by his wife Paloma O’Shea, the pianist daughter of a part-Irish father and a Basque mother; she is the founder of the Queen Sofia College of Music in Madrid and was awarded the rank of marquess, or marchioness, by King Juan Carlos in 2008. The Botíns had six children, of whom the eldest, Ana Patricia Botín, the former chief executive of Santander UK, has succeeded her father as chairman of the Santander group.